Turning a Business Idea into an Actual Business

Everyone has business ideas but, unfortunately, most of them never come to fruition.  That’s because an idea without the plan to back it up is just that, an idea.  If you’re keen on turning your business idea into a business reality the following advice will help you and, hopefully, give you a lot to consider and think about.

One of the first things that you should do is to settle on 1 idea and 1 idea only.  The truth is, many people never get their business dreams off the ground because they’re too busy trying to decide which of their ideas to follow.  If you have a few and they are all good you should pick one and run with it because if you don’t your chance of success is much lower.

If this seems to difficult what you should do is write out each idea and take it as far as you can, on paper, to see which of them is the ‘best’. If you see what an idea could possibly involve and then you compare those unknowns together sometimes the best idea of the bunch will stick out like a sore thumb.

The next thing you need to do is validate your idea.  What we mean is that you need to see your actual product, even if it’s a prototype, in use and get customer feedback about the product to make sure it’s the solution to the problem that you are trying to solve for your customers.  All the market research in the world can’t do as well as some solid feedback on your actual product from as many customers as possible.

Don’t wait until you’re sure you have a million dollar idea. Execute a launch, get your product out there and tweak it as you go if necessary.   Very few businesses were hits right out of the gate but you can bet your sweet bippy that they all started and then worked their way to the top. If your product isn’t perfect right away you can improve it on the fly.

Of course having a target market is vital and, if your idea has a small target market, you may need to expand it so that many people will find it helpful, useful or even adorable (like Webkins for instance). Also keep in mind that the idea should be scalable so that, when orders eventually do start to flow, you’ll be able to take up the slack.

Finally whatever your product is if you can make it the next ‘must have’ item you’ll do well for yourself so make sure that you keep that in mind during the design phase.  The more people that really need your product the better chance of success it will have.  Good luck!